Coming July 2013: STAR TREK ENTERPRISE — RISE OF THE FEDERATION

^Why? We're talking Marines, not Section 31. Presumably they have the same rules of engagement as the rest of Starfleet, i.e. using no more force than necessary and making the protection of innocents a priority.

Not sure how I feel about the MACOS becoming Starfleet Security (I'm still sticking with a 'Starfleet Marine Corps' idea - I've always viewed Security as exclusively shipbound security guards, not front line troops) but otherwise, it's great.

Click to expand...

Well, we've always been shown the same security personnel handling groundside and shipside matters, so that's what I aimed toward. And I wanted to have some tie back to elements of ENT, and to keep Kimura around as part of the crew.

That's just the generic Starfleet emblem we saw throughout TOS -- it's seen on the "racing stripes" on the side of the Enterprise's engineering hull and on the shuttlecraft, and you can usually see it on the wall behind admirals on the viewscreen. I'm not sure what significance it would have in the 23rd-century scheme, but my intent was to keep things loose enough to suggest that my scheme could just be the ancestral form of whatever Starfleet's organizational framework has evolved into by TOS. The distinct fleet insignias could still represent separate fleets in the TOS era -- the Constellation coud've been administered by the Andorian Guard just as the Enterprise is administered by UESPA -- or the structure could've evolved into something else that uses those logos for historical reasons, the same way the historic UESPA arrowhead (whose chronologically earliest appearance is on the Friendship 1 probe) comes to be adopted by Starfleet as a whole by the TMP era.

Christopher I like the new uniform designs how did you come up with the ideas for the different designs for uniform patches and signias for the different Starfleet uniforms?

Click to expand...

The mission patches on the sleeves are following the precedent of ENT. I didn't design any specfic ones, and the Starfleet Command patch I described is the one seen in ENT. As for the insignias representing the fleets, I've felt for a long time that that was more likely than having a different one for each individual ship, since we saw a lot of non-Enterprise personnel wearing the arrowhead in "Court-martial." And we now know, thanks to its appearance on the Friendship 1 probe and on the enlisted rating emblems in ENT, that it was a UESPA insignia as far back as the 2060s. Given that Kirk said in the first season that the E was administered by UESPA, it seemed reasonable to assume the arrowhead represented the "UESPA fleet" and that the other ship insignias we saw represented other administrative divisions within Starfleet. As I said above, the European Space Agency provided the model for how early Starfleet could've been organized.

If you're asking how I chose the specific patches: well, the IDIC for Vulcan was obvious. The Antares emblem from "Charlie X" was a good match for Tellar because of its hooflike shape and because I chose them to handle supply and shipping, which would cover freighters. The Constellation "pretzel" looked vaguely like it could be Andorian script, and I figured maybe Decker's ship could've been assigned more to defense than exploration, given his rather aggressive attitude. And the Exeter insignia was the only canonical TOS-era one left, so it went to Alpha Centauri.

It's going to be interesting to see how the fleets, themselves, are integrated. As McCoy observed in Ex Machina, most ships were done by their owner's races. It makes sense when we assume the Federation Starfleet is going to be a bunch of pre-existing Starfleets shoved together.

Click to expand...

Initially, yes, but the book does explain why later Starfleet vessels all seem to conform to Earth design sensibilities.

Click to expand...

Christopher thank you for answering my question this reallyi s interesting information that helps better to describe the new unifroms while reading your new novel.

Just got started but it seems to be seamlessly moving forward from the last Enterprise book. I am uncertain about Archer's condition since I do not recall any symptoms that he had in the post tv series novels. Is there an active link to the upgraded NX series ships, Christopher?

Just got started but it seems to be seamlessly moving forward from the last Enterprise book. I am uncertain about Archer's condition since I do not recall any symptoms that he had in the post tv series novels.

Click to expand...

Keep reading. It's not "seamless" -- I've jumped forward over a year, and some changes have occurred in the interim.

Is there an active link to the upgraded NX series ships, Christopher?

Click to expand...

It's essentially Doug Drexler's NX-refit design which was featured in the 2011 Ships of the Line calendar.

Haven't there been references to the Starfleet Marines in either screen productions or novels? I swear I've heard that term used in universe somewhere.
As for the uniforms, do you mean something along the lines of the undershirt from the Abramsverse? I could see that working myself.

Click to expand...

Not really. There are behind the scenes sources which describe the guys in blue shirts in Trek V as Marines, but they weren't described as such on screen. In Enterprise's early planning stages Malcolm Reed was described as a "Starfleet Marine" though that was dropped by the time production began. Otherwise, the term "Starfleet Marine" hasn't been used in anything official.

^I did describe the admiral's stripes in Chapter 1: "five alternating wide and narrow stripes." I assume that, as with the captain's stripes, the wide ones are on the outside, so it'd be wide, narrow, wide, narrow, wide.

Click to expand...

Are there Commodores, Rear Admirals and Vice Admirals in Starfleet in this era, with combinations of wide and narrow stripes ?

Click to expand...

Starfleet did have the separate flag grades during Enterprise's run. Admiral Forrest was a Vice Admiral and we saw him as a Commodore in First Flight. Admiral Leonard in Broken Bow was a Rear Admiral. So I'd say there's enough evidence to say "yes."

Haven't there been references to the Starfleet Marines in either screen productions or novels? I swear I've heard that term used in universe somewhere.
As for the uniforms, do you mean something along the lines of the undershirt from the Abramsverse? I could see that working myself.

Click to expand...

Not really. There are behind the scenes sources which describe the guys in blue shirts in Trek V as Marines, but they weren't described as such on screen. In Enterprise's early planning stages Malcolm Reed was described as a "Starfleet Marine" though that was dropped by the time production began. Otherwise, the term "Starfleet Marine" hasn't been used in anything official.

Click to expand...

I've heard speculation that Colonel West from ST VI could be a Marine, given his non-naval rank.

Haven't there been references to the Starfleet Marines in either screen productions or novels? I swear I've heard that term used in universe somewhere.
As for the uniforms, do you mean something along the lines of the undershirt from the Abramsverse? I could see that working myself.

Click to expand...

Not really. There are behind the scenes sources which describe the guys in blue shirts in Trek V as Marines, but they weren't described as such on screen. In Enterprise's early planning stages Malcolm Reed was described as a "Starfleet Marine" though that was dropped by the time production began. Otherwise, the term "Starfleet Marine" hasn't been used in anything official.

Click to expand...

I've heard speculation that Colonel West from ST VI could be a Marine, given his non-naval rank.

Click to expand...

True, though he did wear a Starfleet uniform with the rank insignia of an Admiral. A Colonel is basically equal in rank to a naval Captain, and one would think that if there were Starfleet Marines they'd have some differences between their uniforms and the Starfleet standard.

Only because there are marines in Earth's forces doesn't mean they are part of Federation Starfleet as well. It is made of several species with a longer military tradition in space than Humans. Maybe to Tellarites, Andorians and Vulcans marines are superfluous or anachronistic?

Is there anything in canon stating that The Federation only has one service - Starfleet ? Could they not have a military/peacekeeping force that absorbed the marines ?

Just because we only saw Starfleet personnel acting in The Dominion War doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any...does it ?

Click to expand...

I assume planets would have their own forces, unless membership requires you to disarm them.

Still the above is why I support the idea the Macos were folded into security personnel. The supposition there's Marines leads to more suppositions which leads to more suppositions all to support the central premise. Oddly, the central premise isn't wrong IMHO, I just think the Security Personnel *ARE* marines. Just renamed marines who also handle MP work.

As for Colonel West, he could have been part of Earth Security or have an honorary title from his home planet.

Only because there are marines in Earth's forces doesn't mean they are part of Federation Starfleet as well. It is made of several species with a longer military tradition in space than Humans. Maybe to Tellarites, Andorians and Vulcans marines are superfluous or anachronistic?

The Federation is not a homo sapiens-only club.

Click to expand...

True, things shouldn't be kept just because humans do them, but in this case it's more a matter of practicality. "Marines" are a specialized case of infantry, i.e. ground troops -- specifically those attached to naval operations or involved in amphibious warfare. In an interstellar setting, with starships as the basis for any travel from planet to planet, it stands to reason that any infantry -- troops assigned to fight on planet surfaces or conduct boarding operations on enemy ships or stations -- would most likely be the equivalent of marines.

Now, if we're talking SF universes or futurism in general, one could suggest that the very concept of ground troops might eventually become obsolete, with drones taking their place altogether. In that context, there'd be no infantry and thus no marines. But Star Trek has always been oddly devoid of robots, and the norm has always been to employ live security guards/troops. So it would make sense, at least hypothetically, that there could or even should be a specialized infantry force that would most likely be called either marines or naval infantry. (Although the etymological purist in me insists that starship infantry should be called "Celestines" instead. Except then they sound like a religious order.)

Again, though, Trek canon doesn't support that view; what we've always seen is that the same security personnel handle both shipboard duties and an infantry-like role. But then, this isn't necessarily a problem. Historically, quoth Wikipedia, "The Marine Corps was founded to serve as an infantry unit aboard naval vessels and was responsible for the security of the ship and its crew by conducting offensive and defensive combat during boarding actions and defending the ship's officers from mutiny." This doesn't sound too different from the role of starship security officers, although mutiny in Starfleet is reportedly a near-unprecedented occurrence. And in modern times, US Marines serve as security at US diplomatic posts abroad. So I'm comfortable with the idea that Starfleet Security already is essentially a marine/infantry force by default. Indeed, one could argue that that's their primary function, and that the kind of ship-to-ship tactical role we've seen characters like Worf and Tuvok perform is in addition to that basic infantry-type role.

But yes, I figured Starfleet Security was supposed to be pretty badass. Tasha Yarr says their training is the best in the galaxy. It's just they're usually facing down things which can't be defeated physically.

While this is mostly Roddenberry, also, I could see an in-universe attempt to remove Starfleet's military connotations. Part of the nature of exploration and diplomacy as Starfleet's chief thing would include reassuring people they're not being invaded. Stating they're just "security" and not marines might actually be a bit of political senstitivity.

My personal take has always been that Starfleet is a USO (Unified Service Organization) basically taking all of the varies military organizations and blending them into one (mostly) seamless whole. Therefore there really are not MACO's or Marines, or Navy, nor Andorian Guard nor Vulcan Protectorate or Tellarite Fuzzy Wuzzies. There's just Starfleet which has elements of all of them.

Quite honestly I have never liked "Colonel West" and quite honestly given what we saw go on and what was invented in DS9, I personally just dismiss him as a Section 31 agent who they fed the President a line of bull about since I figure that your average civilian in the 23rd and a half century is as knowledgeable about Starfleet and its inner workings as most of us would be about today's military, plus I imagine that any government leader relies on experts to brief him and if you spend too much time doubting those same experts the job is going to get infinitely more difficult than it already is. In this case sadly President Ra Ghoretti got scammed.